Shirley | Bronte Parsonage Museum Loading... Charlotte's novel of industrial unrest, written from personal turmoil As many critics have noted, Shirley has a number of different plot strands, loosely drawn together. It can be read as a romantic tale, as sociological comment on the question of womens' lives or as a history of the Luddite riots in the cloth-making district of Yorkshire... The novel is set in 1811-12 in the period of Luddite riots with Robert Moore, tenant of Hollow's-mill, encountering trouble when he tries to bring in new equipment. Moore lives at Hollow's cottage with his sister Hortense, who teaches Caroline Helstone, niece of the rector of Briarfield. One evening after Caroline has been dining with Moore and his sister, she realises that she is in love with Moore, and believes him to feel the same about her. Caroline's tedious and oppressed life at the Rectory is evoked with descriptions of visits by Mrs Sykes and her daughters and of visits by the three local curates. Mr Helstone and Moore quarrel and Caroline's uncle forbids her from having anything further to do with the Moores.

Caroline herself has felt uncertain due to Moore's changeability. She determines to try to prepare herself for life without marriage, visiting two elderly spinsters, Miss Mann and Miss Ainley. Under the influence of Miss Ainley, Caroline decides that she must do more to help the poor of the area. Mr Helstone introduces Caroline to Shirley Keeldar, who has just come into her inheritance and is living nearby at Fieldhead. There, she also meets Mrs Pryor, Shirley's former governess and now companion. Caroline becomes good friends with the fiercely independent Shirley and forms a strong attachment to the gentle Mrs Pryor. Caroline still hopes to meet Moore on her frequent walks and one evening sees him talking to Shirley. Caroline later confesses to her maid that she thinks that Moore will marry Shirley. Moore is reconciled with Mr Helstone; soon after this Hollow's-mill is attacked. Moore is wounded and Shirley has to prevent Caroline from rushing to him. Shirley's relatives, the Sympson family, arrive to stay at Fieldhead. While visiting Hortense, Caroline meets Louis Moore, Robert's brother, who is tutor to Henry Sympson, Shirley's young cousin.

Hortense suggests that Robert Moore is favoured by Shirley. Caroline falls into a grave illness and Mrs Pryor is sent by Shirley to nurse her. Mrs Pryor reveals that she is Caroline's mother, her real name is Agnes Helstone. Caroline, given a reason to live, recovers. A number of incidents occur in which Louis Moore shows tender feelings towards Shirley, his former pupil. The strength of Louis Moore's feelings are made clear to the reader as he broods over her desk in her absence. Shirley has had several proposals of marriage which she has rejected despite pressure from the Sympsons and on a journey with Mr Yorke, Robert Moore confesses that he proposed to Shirley some time ago and was turned down. On the same journey Moore is shot at and wounded and is taken to Mr Yorke's house to recover. Yorke's young son arranges for Caroline to see Moore, which helps his recovery. Louis and Shirley declare their love. Moore proposes to Caroline and she accepts. Moore states that Caroline has changed his views and that in future he will take on more workers and that she shall set up a Sunday School. The novel ends with a double wedding.

The Best Bronte Books By Juliet Barker | Jul 27, 2012 Juliet Barker's landmark biography, The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family , has just received an update--making the feat of chronicling literature's most famous family even more heroic, and making the 1,200 page volume even more comprehensive. Barker, the former curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Howarth, ranked the books of the sisters for Tip Sheet. Ranking Jane Austen’s novels may cause controversy – but it’s a storm in a tea-cup compared to the elemental forces unleashed when asked to choose between the Brontë novels. The three weird sisters of Haworth arouse passions like no other writers: Austen has fans but the Brontës have devotees and, believe me, there’s a very big difference – criticising Pride and Prejudice doesn’tprovoke a baying lynch-mob in quite the same way as hinting that all is not perfection in Wuthering Heights.

Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have consistently spent decades in the top five best-selling and most popular novels of all time, so doesn’t that make them the obvious candidates for joint first? But I’d like to make the case for... 1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne is the also-ran of the Brontë family yet The Tenant shares all the virtues of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights – powerful writing, gripping storyline, dramatic tension and passionate authorial involvement – whilst remaining firmly rooted in reality (no Rochester fooling his guests by disguising himself as a gypsy-woman or Heathcliff digging up his lover’s corpse). It’s the only Brontë novel not to feature orphans and/or dysfunctional families and it’s steeped with quiet humour. But its heroine, Helen Huntingdon, is a woman who flouts every convention by leaving her husband to save their child whom he is corrupting, earning her own independent living and eventually herself proposing marriage to the man she loves. Forget Jane Eyre – this really is Victorian feminism at its most radical! 2.

Jane Eyre - Who could fail to identify with Charlotte’s brave little orphan who refuses to be crushed by her bullying cousins, her sadistic head-master, or even the domineering man she loves. ‘Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?’ she demands of Rochester. ‘I am a free human being, with an independent will’, she tells him and how we cheer as she goes on to prove it, refusing to be his mistress rather than his wife and rejecting the passionless St John Rivers. Jane Eyre doesn’t win first place because it has its silly moments (as in the gypsy-woman episode) but mainly because it was an unnecessary and cowardly cop-out to give Jane a newly discovered family and fortune before she returns to Rochester. 3. Wuthering Heights - What can you say about the world’s greatest love-story, beloved of millions of hormonal teenagers and the silver screen? Except that it most definitely is not a love story. A tale of thwarted passions, obsession and revenge indeed – but not of genuine love.

Heathcliff and Cathy are two sides of the same coin: ‘I am Heathcliff!’ says Cathy, ‘he’s more myself than I am’. When they cannot have what they want, their mutual response is to destroy each other. There is love in the book, but it’s not the ravings of Heathcliff and Cathy: it’s the blossoming affection between Heathcliff’s innocent victims Hareton and Catherine. There’s no denying the sheer power of Wuthering Heights, nor the cleverness of its structure, but as every film director has discovered, the death of Cathy less than half way through the book, though necessary to the plot, leaves the reader feeling short-changed. 4. Villette - Charlotte’s last completed novel. Exquisitely crafted by an artist at the height of her powers, Villette is a return to the theme of master and pupil. Lucy Snowe’s cold exterior shell hides a passionate Brontë interior: she loses her first love to the pretty and wealthy Paulina, but lands her own true admirer in the sardonic Professor Paul Emanuel.

But she doesn’t ‘deserve’ to find happiness and therefore, in a deliberately enigmatic ending, her professor is presumed drowned at sea before they can marry. Stylistically Villette is Charlotte’s most successful novel but its subdued atmosphere and the problematic nature of its central character make it an acquired taste. 5. Agnes Grey - If you thought Charlotte created the first plain heroine in Jane Eyre then think again: it was Anne in this deceptively simple tale of virtue rewarded. Drawing on her own experiences, Anne spares nothing in her portrayal of the miserable existence of the governess: the haughty, unfeeling treatment of her employers, the vicious behaviour of their spoilt children and the helplessness of the poor governess herself, living in a wealthy household but despised and excluded by family and servants alike. Agnes, unlike Anne herself, finds escape in the love of a good man. It’s an unsensational tale but it would be hard to find a more hard-hitting picture of the trials and tribulations of governess-life in the nineteenth century. 6. The Professor - Charlotte’s first novel written for publication but rejected by everyone to whom she submitted it.

The reasons are obvious, especially when it’s compared to her later work. The central mistake is in having a male narrator – no one excels in capturing the female voice like Charlotte – but Frances Henri, with whom he falls in love, is one of Charlotte’s most charming female creations. There are glimpses of the brilliance Charlotte would later show as an author, particularly when she draws on her own experiences as a pupil-teacher in Belgium, but The Professor is really a juvenile work – quite literally, since it originated in the Angrian tales she had written since childhood. 7. Shirley - Last, but by no means least. A worthy book, written to highlight the plight of unmarried women, it’s also the only novel Charlotte actually researched, setting it in the period of the Luddite riots and consulting old newspapers ‘in order to understand the spirit of those eventful times’. But Charlotte wasn’t a social reformer or historian – she was quintessentially a novelist of the female heart – and that’s what’s missing from the book. It’s easy to understand why since, in the course of writing it, she lost all three of her siblings. It’s a miracle she wrote it at all – but it feels laboured.

So, like the classic school report, its full marks for effort – but could do better. ADVERTISEMENT "Shirley" as a Condition-of-England Novel [ Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charlotte Brontë ] Contemporary critics found Shirley (1849) inferior to Jane Eyre . In the Edinburgh Review, G. H. Lewes complained that the novel lacked “all unity in consequence of defective art” (159). However, recent criticism has discovered in Shirley a significant condition-of-England theme as well as a clearly feminist discourse. Patricia Ingham, for instance, considers Shirley an industrial novel that successfully tackles both gender and class issues during the Industrial Revolution in England. Shirley was published at the end of the “Hungry Forties,” a decade of profound social unrest. In the novel, Charlotte Brontë both refracted some of Carlyle’s concerns raised in “Signs of the Times” ( text ) and “Chartism” as well as Disraeli’s anxiety about the two nation divide and also blended them with the Woman Question .

The novel has a complex plot: an unromantic tale with two interpolated social commentaries: on the history of the Luddite riots in the cloth-making district of Yorkshire, and on the struggle for female independence from male dominance in patriarchal society. At the outset, the narrator assures its readers that they will not find narrative a conventional romance. If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid, lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. [5] In other words, Shirley, which differs considerably from Jane Eyre, declares its affinity with Benjamin Disraeli’s Sibyl and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and North and South . The novel contains an explicit social discourse about the Condition of England aimed at highlighting the class and gender divide and its possible social consequences.

In early 1812, Luddism spread to Yorkshire, where croppers, a small and highly skilled group of cloth finishers, turned their anger on the new shearing frame that they feared would put them out of work. Soon Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act which made machine-breaking a capital offence. The following passage, in which Brontë proves to have a fine ear for the local dialect, suggests that the author sympathises with workers who are most concerned with the loss of employment. They do not want to destroy machines because of ignorance but because they believe that factory owners will constantly reduce the number of employees thanks to the introduction of labour-saving machinery. “I’ve not much faith I’ Moses Barraclough,” said he; “and I would speak a word to you myseln, Mr. Moore. It’s out o’ no ill-will that I’m here, for my part; it’s just to mak’ a effort to get things straightened, for they’re sorely acrooked. Ye see we’re ill off, — varry ill off: wer families is poor and pined.

We’re thrawn out o‘ work wi’ these frames: we can get nought to do: we can earn nought. What is to be done? Mun we say, wisht! and lig us down and dee? Nay: I’ve no grand words at my tongue’s end, Mr. Moore, but I feel that it wad be a low principle for a reasonable man to starve to death like a dumb cratur’: — I will n’t do’t. I’m not for shedding blood: I’d neither kill a man nor hurt a man; and I’m not for pulling down mills and breaking machines: for, as ye say, that way o” going on ’ll niver stop invention; but I’ll talk, — I’ll mak’ as big a din as ever I can. Invention may be all right, but I know it isn’t right for poor folks to starve. Them that governs mun find a way to help us: they mun mak’ fresh orderations.

Ye’ll say that’s hard to do: — so mich louder mun we shout out then, for so mich slacker will t’ Parliament-men be to set on to a tough job.”[137] Brontë did not witness the Luddite riots, although she had some first-hand accounts of them from her father, who sometimes acted on behalf of the authorities during the riots. Like Carlyle and Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë is concerned with the plight of the industrial workers. She is aware that the revolt against the unemployment caused by the introduction of machines during the early phase of the Industrial Revolution might lead to major social upheavals. However, what Brontë eventually offers is a simplified solution to remedy the antagonism between masters and workers. Her solution is based on an idealised co-operation and co-existence between benevolent masters and loyal workers. As Patricia Ingham points out in the conclusion of her analysis of Shirley “The novel speaks for the working class but still cannot let them speak for themselves. They remain what Carlyle in Chartism (1839) called ’that great dumb toiling class which cannot speak’” (54).

The Woman Question — that is, issues regarding women’s legal status and their roles in both the public and private spheres — parallels the Condition-of-England Question in the novel. The eponymous character, Shirley Keeldar, is one of the first independent and strong-willed heroines in English literature, who anticipates the New Woman at the end of the Victorian era. Shirley’s foil, Caroline Helstone, represents a conventional Victorian female: she is shy, submissive and self-repressed. Both women struggle, each in their own way, to find happiness and fulfilment in life, but the epilogue of the novel demonstrates that options available to women were very limited. They both fail to find self-fulfilment outside conventional marriage. As Rosemarie Bodenheimer has demonstrated, “paternalism is an assumption central to Charlotte Brontë’s imagination of human relations.” (37) Brontë proposes in Shirley paternalism as a solution to both industrial disputes and the Woman Question. Paternalism seems to have been advocated by Victorian writers as an alternative to a number of social ills. Victorian paternalism was a consequence of the laissez-faire doctrine .

It offered an alternative to free-market economy by defining the relationship between employers and employees based on humane principles. Paternalism propagated the vision of an industrial society as a big hierarchical family with benevolent employers and dependent employees who revived the old master-servant relationship. References Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Brontë, Charlotte. Shirley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Edinburgh Review. Vol. XCL. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London; and Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, 1850. Ingham, Patricia. The Language of Gender and Class: Transformation in the Victorian Novel. 1996. Shirley: Amazon.co.uk: Charlotte BrontÃ«: 9781477652626: Books Charlotte BrontÃ« Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Apple To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. or Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . Product details Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (14 Jun. 2012) Language: English Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 3.4 x 22.9 cm Average Customer Review: Product Description From the Back Cover Following the tremendous popular success of Jane Eyre, which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Bronte vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle that focused on "something real and unromantic as Monday morning". Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and Luddite revolts of 1811-12, Shirley (1849) is the story of two contrasting heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention.

A work that combines social commentary with the more private preoccupations of Jane Eyre, Shirley demonstrates the full range of Bronte's literary talent. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. About the Author The eldest of the three Bront? sisters, Charlotte is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which was published under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Bront? s works were revolutionary for their time, reflecting a truthfulness about love and relationships that was not common in Victorian-era England. While Jane Eyre was, and continues to be, her most popular work, Charlotte Bront? published numerous works during her short life, including juvenilia, poetry, and the novels Shirley and Villette. Charlotte Bront? died in 1855, outliving both of her sisters, Anne and Emily. Collectively, the Bront? sisters novels are considered literary standards that continue to influence modern writers. What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Luddites and Charlotte Brontë eText - Primary Source - eNotes.com The Luddites and Charlotte Brontë eText - Primary Source Navigate Study Guiderows Various documents attributed to the Luddites Delivered in 1811 Excerpt from Shirley, a Tale Published in 1849 "Misery generates hate." —Charlotte Brontë The introduction of newly invented water- or steam-powered machinery into England's textile industry, starting in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, had a major impact on workers right from the beginning. People skilled at making yarn or fabric with traditional hand-operated spinning machines or looms soon discovered that with the new equipment, one or two workers could produce the same amount of yarn or cloth as a dozen or more workers using the old machines. With fewer workers needed to produce the same amount of goods, jobs in textiles became harder to find. In 1811 near Nottingham, England, a group of workers who made knee-high stockings that were commonly worn with short trousers (called breeches) reacted to these changes by breaking into factories and wrecking the new machines.

The vandals came to be known as "Luddites," a word that has come to mean people who reject technical innovation. The original Luddites also criticized owners of the new machines for replacing highly skilled workers with people with far less training or experience, even though the machines had taken over some of the skilled tasks needed to make yarn and fabric by hand. (In their letters of protest, the Luddites often referred to the new equipment as "frames," a reference to the fact that fabric looms looked like the outside edges of a hollow box, on which yarn was strung for weaving or knitting. Knitting and weaving are two different techniques for making fabric from yarn.) Unskilled people were willing to work for lower wages than the skilled workers, which resulted in a reduction in wages for everyone in the textile industry. At first, factory owners ignored the protests. In frustration, some workers turned to violence, destroying the new machines they blamed for their economic problems. The vandals sent letters signed with the name "General Ned Ludd" (or variations of this name, such as Nedd Lud and Edward Ludd).

Some historians think Ned Ludd was the name of an actual person, a man of limited intelligence who lived in the area of Leicestershire, England, around 1779. According to a story told about him, after being teased by village boys he chased his tormentors into a house. There, in frustration, he wrecked two machines used for making stockings. Other historians say that Ned Ludd was a real person involved in the antimachine riots. Still others insist that Ned Ludd was a fictitious character, a pseudonym (false name) used to disguise the identity of the letter writers. What the authors of the Luddite letters had in common was an evidently limited education, which was not surprising since children as young as eight often stopped school and went to work helping their parents spin yarn at home, or later, to operate machines in the newly built factories. The Luddite letters reflect a degree of illiteracy and irregular spelling. In some cases, they are attempts to mimic formal legal documents. Although the Luddites could not write perfect English, they were well organized. Their attacks on factories were not just random riots; they were planned, and often factory owners received threats in advance.

This collection of documents illustrates several sides of the Luddites. The first document is a threat against a specific owner of new textile machines. It is written to sound like an official document, perhaps the writer's notion of a formal legal indictment (accusation), even though it was doubtless drawn up by workers who had no official standing. The second document is a Luddite oath. Many of these documents were collected by local officials and sent to the British parliament in London as a warning that trouble was brewing among textile workers. The oath indicates that the Luddites were an organized group that had specific goals, including keeping the names of members a secret. The third document is from a fragment of a paper that was delivered as a threat against a factory owner. It shows both the intent of the Luddites and the limited education of most workers in the era. (Because it is only a fragment, it contains some breaks that do not make immediate sense.) The fourth document is a letter from unemployed knitters to hosiery manufacturers in Nottingham, England. It was written early in the Luddite uprising and lays out the complaints of the workers.

The fifth document is a fragment of a follow-up letter, purportedly written by Ned Ludd, one month after the previous letter from the knitters, warning that unless the stocking makers take action, they will have to face the consequences. The last document is an excerpt from the 1849 novel Shirley, a Tale, by Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855). This fictional account, written almost forty years after the attacks by the Luddites, describes a nighttime raid by disaffected workers, and the determination of a factory owner to protect his property. The main characters in the story are Robert Gerard Moore, who owns a textile factory, and Shirley Keeldar, a woman Moore is courting at least partly to gain access to her inherited fortune. The other two characters in this passage are Mr. Malone, a curate (assistant clergyman), and Caroline Helstone, a teenage friend of Shirley Keeldar. In the passage, Moore is waiting for some new machines to be delivered, ready to protect them from an attack by Luddites. Shirley and her friend Caroline are at home, not far from the factory, listening to the sounds of the attack that soon came.

Things to remember while reading various Luddite documents and the excerpt from Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, a Tale: At the time of the Luddite movement, England was fighting a war against Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821), the emperor of France who was intent on spreading French power and influence throughout Europe. This war had a negative effect on the English economy and made the conditions of textile workers even more difficult. The promise of the new machines was to sell more cloth to customers worldwide, but trading opportunities were limited during the war against France. The result was widespread unemployment among textile workers, who blamed their woes on the new machines rather than on the restraints on foreign trade caused by the war with France. Britain's war with France made the Luddites seem especially threatening. The French Revolution (1789–99) had advocated equality for all men, whereas political power in England was still limited to property owners. Some people in England saw the Luddites as people who wanted to stage a revolution similar to the French Revolution, and for that reason the government was quick to come down hard on the Luddites, dispatching troops to maintain order.

Many, or most, textile workers in 1811 did not know how to read or write. This illiteracy is reflected in some of the Luddite documents reproduced here. On the other hand, some of the documents reflect an effort to mimic legal documents, using terms such as whereas, enjoin, adjudge, and forfeited. The original spelling and appearance of the documents has been preserved here. Luddite letter threatening an owner of textile machines Declaration; Extraordinary. Death, or Revenge. To our well-beloved Brother, and Captain in Chief, Edward Ludd.

Whereas, it hathbeen represented to us: the General Agitators, for the Northern Counties, assembled to redress the Grievances of the Operative Mechanics, That Charles Lacy, of the Town of Nottingham, British Lace Manufacturer, has been guilty of divers fraudulent, and oppressiv, Acts—whereby he has reduced to poverty and Misery Seven Hundred of our beloved Brethren; moreover, it hath been represented to us that the said Charles Lacy, by making fraudulent Cotton Point Nett, of One Thread Stuff, has obtaind the Sum of Fifteen Thousand Pounds, whereby he has ruined the Cotton-Lace Trade, and consequently our worthy and wellbelovd Brethren; whose support and comfort depended on the continuance of that manufacture.

It appeareth to us that the said Charles Lacy was actuated by the most diabolical motives, namely to get rich gain riches by the misery of his Fellow Creatures, we therefore willing to make an example of the said Charles Lacy, do adjudge the said Fifteen Thousand Pounds to be forfeited, and we do hereby authorise, impower, and enjoin you, to command Charles Lacy to disburse the said sum, in equal shares among the Workmen, who made Cotten Nett in the Year 1807, within ten Days from the Date hereof.

In default whereof, we do command that you inflict the Punishment of Death on the said Charles Lacy, and we do authorise you to distribute among the party you may employ for that purpose the Sum of Fifty Pounds, we enjoin you to cause this our Order to be presented to the said Charles Lacy without Delay, November 1811—By Order Thos Death A Luddite Oath I, AB, of my own free will and accord do hereby promise and swear that I will never reveal any of the names of any one of this secret Committee, under the penalty of being sent out of this world by the first Brother that may meet me. I furthermore do swear, that I will pursue with unceasing vengeance any Traitors or Traitor, should there any arise, should he fly to the verge of—I furthermore do swear that I will be sober and faithful, in all my dealings with all my Brothers, and if ever I decline them, my name to be blotted out from the list of Society and never to be remembered, but with contemptand abhorrence, so help me God to keep this our Oath inviolate. Signed Thomas Broughton.

An address from the framework knitters to the gentlemen hosiers of the town of Nottingham Nottinghm—Novembr 28 1811 GENTLEMEN,—At a time like the present, so big with Calamityand Distress, we think it right to solicit your Advice, Aid, and Direction, as we know no Reason why our Business, which is looked upon as the staple Trade, and principal Support of the Community at large, should be exposed to so many Evils, without any suitable means of defence; or if [there are] any, why [they are] not brought forward into exercise. As we have nothing in view but a reciprocal Advantage in the Trade, both for ourselves and you, and a mutual good Understanding in all our Actions, we solicit your Advice, Aid, Direction, and Support, in this time of our Calamity and Distress, and we think we have a humble Claim upon you for it. On account of the great rise of all the Necessaries of Life, a Man that has full employ, with all his industry, and a Woman, with all her care and economy, can by no means support a Family with any degree of Comfort.

If this is the Case (which it really is) how deplorable must the situation of those be, that have but a small portion of Employ, and at very low Rates; but still worse, what must the situation of those be that have none at all, which is the Case with incalculable numbers at this time. Destitute of all the Comforts of Life, our only acquaintance is pinching Poverty and pining Want. We wish to live peaceably and honestly by our Labour, and to train up our Children in the paths of virtue and rectitude, but we cannot accomplish our wishes. Our Children, instead of being trained up by a regular course of Education, for social life, virtuous employments, and all the reciprocal advantages of mutual enjoyment, are scarce one remove from the Brute,are left to all the dangerous Evils attendant on an uncultivated Mind, and often fall dreadful Victims to that guilt, which Ignorance is the parent of. But, Gentlemen, we forbear, as we think it would be insulting both to your judgments and feelings, were we to attempt a description of all our Calamities, which you so well know, and which we so much experience.

Our request, Gentlemen, is that you will favor us with your best Advice, respecting as Address to Parliament, for the better Regulation of our Trade, and means of defence against future Impositions. Being well assured that the most suitable means lie in the compass of your breasts, we wish to pay all deference to your superior judgments, and are now waiting for your decision, which we hope you will favor us with as soon as possible; that if it meets your views, the Business may be conducted peaceably and in good order, to our mutual Comfort and Advantage.

Follow-up letter (fragment) allegedly written by Ned Ludd, appearing one month after the above communication Ned Lud Gives Notic, to the Coperation [Ned Ludd Gives Notice to the Corporation] if the Coperation does not take means to Call A Meeting with the Hoseiars about the prices Being— Droped Ned will asemble 20000 Menn together in a few Days and will Destroy the town in Spite of the Soldiers— no King— Excerpt from Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, a Tale The "Orders in Council," provoked by Napoleon's Milan and Berlin decrees, and forbidding neutral powers to trade with France, had, by offending America, cut off the principal market of the Yorkshire woollen trade, and brought it consequently to the verge of ruin. Minor foreign markets were glutted, and would receive no more: the Brazils, Portugal, Sicily, were all overstocked by nearly two years' consumption. At this crisis certain inventions in machinery were introduced into the staple manufactures of the north, which, greatly reducing the number of hands necessary to be employed, threw thousands out of work, and left them without legitimate means of sustaining life. A bad harvest supervened. Distress reached its climax.

Endurance, overgoaded, stretched the hand of fraternity to sedition. The throes of a sort of moral earthquake were felt heaving under the hills of the northern counties. But, as is usual in such cases, nobody took much notice. When a food riot broke out in a manufacturing town, when a gig-mill was burnt to the ground, or a manufacturer's house was attacked, the furniture thrown into the streets, and the family forced to flee for their lives, some local measures were or were not taken by the local magistracy; a ring-leader was detected, or more frequently suffered [allowed] to elude detection; newspaper paragraphs were written on the subject, and there the thing stopped. As to the sufferers [workers], whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost that inheritance—who could not get work, and consequently could not get wages, and consequently could not get bread—they were left to suffer on; perhaps inevitably left: it would not do to stop the progress of invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; the war could not be terminated, efficient relief could not be raised: there was no help then; so the unemployed underwent their destiny—ate the bread and drank the waters of affliction.

Misery generates hate: these sufferers hated the machines which they believed took their bread from them: they hated the buildings which contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those buildings. In the parish of Briarfield, with which we have at present to do, Hollow's Mill was the place held most abominable; Gerard Moore, in his double character of semi-foreigner and thoroughgoing progressist, the man most abominated. And it perhaps rather agreed with Moore's temperament than otherwise to be generally hated especially when he believed the thing for which he was hated a right and an expedient thing; and it was with a sense of warlike excitement he, on this night, sat in his counting-house waiting the arrival of his frame-laden waggons. Malone's coming and company were, it may be, most unwelcome to him: he would have preferred sitting alone; for he liked a silent, sombre, unsafe solitude: his watchman's musket would have been company enough for him.… "What are they doing now, Shirley? What is that noise?" "Hatchets and crowbars against the yard-gates: they are forcing them.

Are you afraid?" "No; but my heart throbs fast; I have a difficulty in standing: I will sit down. Do you feel unmoved?"… "Shirley—Shirley, the gates are down! That crash was like the felling of great trees. Now they are pouring through. They will break down the mill doors as they have broken the gate: what can Robertdo against so many? Would to God I were a little nearer him—could hear him speak—could speak to him! With my will—my longing to serve him—I could not be a useless burden in his way: I could be turned to some account." "They come on!" cried Shirley. "How steadily they march in! There is discipline in their ranks—I will not say there is courage: hundreds against tens are no proof of that quality but" (she dropped her voice) "there's suffering and desperation enough amongst them—these goads will urge them forwards." "Forwards against Robert—and they hate him. Shirley, is there much danger they will win the day?…" A crash—smash—shiver—stopped their whispers.

A simultaneously-hurled volley of stones had saluted the broad front of the mill, with all its windows; and now every pane of every lattice lay shattered and pounded fragments. A yell followed this demonstration—a rioters' yell—a North-of-England—a Yorkshire—a West-Riding—a West-Riding-clothing-district-of Yorkshire rioters' yell. You never heard that sound, perhaps, reader? So much the better for your ears—perhaps for your heart; since, if it rends the air in hate to yourself, or to the men or principles you approve, the interests to which you wish well. Wrath wakens to the cry of Hate: the Lion shakes his mane, and rises to the howl of the Hyena: Caste stands up ireful against Caste; and the indignant, wronged spirit of the Middle Rank bears down in zeal and scorn on the famished and furious mass of the Operativeclass. It is difficult to be tolerant—difficult to be just—in such moments. Caroline rose, Shirley put her arm round her: they stood together as still as the straight stems of two trees.

That yell was a long one, and when it ceased, the night was yet full of the swaying and murmuring of a crowd. "What next?" was the question of the listeners. Nothing came yet. The mill remained mute as a mausoleum.… Shots were discharged by the rioters. Had the defenders waited for this signal? It seemed so. The hitherto inert and passive mill woke: fire flashed from its empty window-frames; a volley of musketry pealed sharp through the Hollow. "Moore speaks at last!" said Shirley, "and he seems to have the gift of tongues; that was not a single voice." "He has been forbearing; no one can accuse him of rashness," alleged Caroline: "their discharge preceded his: they broke his gates and his windows; they fired at his garrison before he repelled them." What was going on now? It seemed difficult, in the darkness, to distinguish, but something terrible, a still-renewing tumult, was obvious: fierce attacks, desperate repulses; the mill-yard, the mill itself, was full of battle movements: there was scarcely any cessation now of the discharge of firearms; and there was struggling, rushing, trampling, and shouting between.

The aim of the assailants seemed to be to enter the mill, that of the defendants to beat them off. They heard the rebel leader cry, "To the back, lads!" They heard a voice retort, "Come round, we will meet you!" "To the counting-house!" was the order again. "Welcome! We shall have you there!" was the response. And accordingly, the fiercest blaze that had yet glowed, the loudest rattle that had yet been heard, burst from the counting-house front, when the mass of rioters rushed up to it.… The rioters had never been so met before. At other mills they had attacked, they had found no resistance; an organised, resolutedefence was what they never dreamed of encountering. When their leaders saw the steady fire kept up from the mill, witnessed the composure and determination of its owner, heard themselves coolly defied and invited on to death, and beheld their men falling wounded round them, they felt that nothing was to be done here.

In haste, they mustered their forces, drew them away from the building: a roll was called over, in which the men answered to figures instead of names: they dispersed wide over the fields, leaving silence and ruin behind them. The attack, from its commencement to its termination, had not occupied an hour.… The mill yawned all ruinous with unglazed frames; the yard was thickly bestrewn with stones and brickbats, and, close under the mill, with the glittering fragments of the shattered windows, muskets and other weapons lay here and there; more than one deep crimson stain was visible on the gravel; a human body lay quiet on its face near the gates; and five or six wounded men writhed and moaned in the bloody dust. Miss [Shirley] Keeldar's countenance changed at this view: it was the after-taste of the battle, death and pain replacing excitement and exertion: it was the blackness the bright fire leaves when its blaze is sunk, its warmth failed, and its glow faded. What happened next … In 1812 the Luddite movement spread to other areas of Britain where new looms had been introduced.

The British government was quick to react. In 1812 Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act, making wrecking of machinery a capital offense, meaning that people convicted of doing so could be executed. Twelve thousand troops were sent to the affected areas to guard factories. Some factory owners hired armed men to guard their property. In one case, in Yorkshire, at least two Luddites were killed while attacking a factory. A few days later, the owner of another factory was killed. Fourteen workers were hanged for attacking the first factory, and three others were executed for murdering the factory owner in the second case. Over time, the Luddite movement died out as workers became discouraged. The number of new spinning machines and looms continued to increase, and there was no evidence that wrecking them was going to slow the progress of the Industrial Revolution. The last attack connected with the Luddite movement occurred in 1817. Did you know … The term "Luddite" remains in use today, to describe people opposed to the rapid introduction of new technology, such as computers and the Internet or biotechnology (developing new varieties of grains, for example).

Some people have adopted the term "neo-Luddite" (new Luddite) to describe themselves. They argue that new technology should not be adopted without taking into account the costs in disruption of peoples' lives. On the other hand, some people who call themselves neo-Luddites have embraced technology, arguing that computers linked to the Internet will enable individuals to regain control over their lives, control that was lost when the Industrial Revolution forced many independent workers into factories. The role of technology in society remains a subject of intense debate. For more information Luddism in Nineteenth-Century Literature Essay - Critical Essays - eNotes.com Luddism in Nineteenth-Century Literature Essay - Critical Essays link Link Luddism in Nineteenth-Century Literature Literature written in response to the 1811-12 Luddite revolt and resulting movement by workers against the English textile factories that displaced craftsmen in favor of machines. In Nottinghamshire, England, in 1811, a series of “machine-breaking” disturbances began that would rock the English weaving industry and become a symbol of the protest against the new industrialization of the nineteenth century.

The movement that followed, Luddism, attempted to secure decent compensation and working conditions for those displaced by the advent of new industrial machinery. The “Luddite riots,” as they were known, were carried out by workers in the textile industry, mostly weavers, who for centuries had enjoyed the status of fine independent craftsmen but who were now faced with losing their livelihood because of the new machines. They took their name from Ned Ludd (also called “King Ludd” and “General Ludd”), a probably mythical figure who reputedly lived in Sherwood Forest and in whose name virulent anti-industrialization proclamations were issued. While Luddism began as a nonviolent form of protest, with workers appearing in factories on behalf of Ludd and demanding reasonable compensation and acceptable work conditions, it soon turned violent. Factory owners who did not comply found their expensive machinery wrecked. Workers began to break into factories at night to destroy the new technology—stocking frames, cropping frames, power looms, and other machines—that were making their own skilled work obsolete.

From Nottinghamshire, Luddism quickly spread to other areas of England where weaving was an important part of the economy and where the new technology was displacing craftsmen, including Yorkshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, and Derbyshire. By February 1812, Luddite “armies” had smashed about a thousand machines. That month the government proposed that machine-breaking should become a capital offense, and Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act that enabled people convicted of machine-breaking to be sentenced to death. The government also deployed troops into the areas where the Luddites were active. In April 1812, led by the cropper George Mellor, the Luddites attacked Rawfolds Mill and killed a manufacturer, which led to mass arrests and the execution of more than a dozen workers. The disturbances continued for another five years, with the crisis heightened by a rise in wheat prices and plummeting textile prices. The revolt ultimately failed and the movement was suppressed, but the discontent and plight of workers displaced by the newly industrialized economy continued to be a pressing social issue for Britain throughout the rest of the nineteenth century.

Although at the time relatively little was written about the revolt—either in the press or in literary works—the Luddites and their cause became well known, and this local movement by a small number of displaced textile workers remains a familiar episode in English history. However, the Luddites are often wrongly associated simply with a distrust of technology when in fact Luddism is better characterized as an early movement that recognized the dangers and social costs associated with human dependence on new technology. The nineteenth-century figures who wrote about the 1811-12 rebellion focused on this aspect of the workers' struggle. While not all were directly sympathetic with the Luddites, almost every writer who discussed the disturbances acknowledged that the celebrated economic progress associated with industrialization failed to take into account the dramatic changes that emerging technology had inflicted on the lives of workers. The two most famous authors who wrote about the rebellion were the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, who delivered an impassioned speech in the House of Lords defending the actions of the Luddites, and Charlotte Brontë, whose novel Shirley (1849), set during the time of the disturbances, offers a complex view of the changes precipitated by the new technology.

Although the Romantic poets William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, John Keats, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge did not directly acknowledge the revolt in their writing, some of their poems have been interpreted as supporting the cause of the workers. Less familiar to most readers today are the broadside poems and ballads written by workers in response to the new factories, as well as the poems, songs, threatening letters, petitions, and proclamations written by the Luddites themselves. Most accounts of and discussions about Luddism have been written by historians who note the paucity of responses to the event by contemporary writers. Critics who have written about the literature associated with the Luddites have discussed the “hidden” Luddite sympathies in the works of Romantic and Victorian writers, examined Brontë's attitude toward the rebellion and the recording of history in Shirley, and discussed the rhetorical strategies and style of the Luddites in their writings. Scholars have also noted that the lessons taught by the Luddites and their literary sympathizers are especially relevant in the twenty-first century, as computers and their associated technology have fundamentally altered the role of contemporary workers just as machines changed the lives of nineteenth-century craftsmen.

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Question: The Luddite Riots appear in which of Charlotte Bronte's novels?
Answer: Shirley